Commentary by Russian blogger Donetsk
[DonRF] Six months have passed. Some preliminary conclusions can be drawn already now, although, by and large, they were made long ago, but are not in demand. The problem with military thought is that there have been no major wars since Korea. And that, by and large, was a kind of continuation of the Second World War. But there was a desire to win with small forces and high technologies. The only European conflict before the NWO was the Yugoslav War, and if we look at the events of 1999, we get:
During this operation, NATO aircraft made over 20,000 sorties, using about 37,000 munitions, including guided missiles (AGM-142 "Popay", AGM-130, AGM-154, AGM-84 SLAM, AGM-86C , AGM-86 ALCM), guided bombs (GBU-31, GBU-37), as well as UGM-109 cruise missiles (version BGM-109), which were fired by the Royal Navy from submarine torpedo tubes
So what? The result was somewhat ... ambiguous:
the Slatina airfield in Pristina was attacked 47 times (a total of 720 missiles and bombs were dropped), the Batajnica airfield (north of Belgrade) 38 times (620 missiles and bombs), the Ponikve airfield 37 times (700 missiles and bombs)
As a result, the air bases were not destroyed, and the losses of the Yugoslav Armed Forces were minimal. Even the Air Force was not completely knocked out. Even the air defense was not destroyed. The ground troops suffered little. The self-evident conclusion is that in a confrontation with a developed country that is more or less ready to fight, it is possible to win only by aircraft and missiles, but only if the enemy has a small territory and does not have modern air defense and external support. So superiority in air and missiles is never a panacea, and missile and air force strikes do not guarantee victory.
The satellite constellation is also there - the most powerful network of NATO satellites and the use of AWACS aircraft did not allow seeing EVERYTHING. In principle, Yugoslavia fell only because there was no hope at all. And the economy collapsed. NATO did not dare to launch a ground operation.
There is also an opposite example - air defense. That in 1991, from the SCUD, that during the attacks of the Arabs on the Iron Dome of the Israelis, it was proved that there is no absolute air defense.
Basically. Air defense can be deceived, overloaded, bypassed ... Russian special military operation showed a similar picture - at least two militant tricks got into the media - launching Hurricanes and then HIMARS, forcing air defense to intercept Hurricanes, and launching two U Points at the same time.
In any case, neither the air defense, but the Ukrainian government has a powerful one, and even partially modernized, nor the missile strikes themselves gave the expected effect. Yes, it hurts, yes, it hurts. And that's all. Even the destruction of bridges in the Kherson region did not lead to the interruption of logistics. Bridges, of course, must be destroyed, this makes deliveries difficult, but does not interrupt. Modern armed forces have options for quickly building crossings and quickly repairing bridges.
Similarly, tanks are beautiful and powerful vehicles, you can play biathlon with them, you can arrange parades. But gathered in huge columns and trying to cosplay blitzkriegs and deep operations of the war, they become expendable in the conditions of saturation of the enemy with light and easy-to-handle anti-tank weapons. This does not mean that tanks are not needed, but the time for deep operations is gone. It left because the tanks of that war were relatively cheap consumables, by the way, like tankers with pilots, and they were accompanied by a huge amount of infantry.
And now ... the growth in the value of human life (objective in conditions of low birth rates and the complexity of technology, which makes people valuable specialists) has led to the degradation of the infantry. It is the infantry that we lack. It is the infantry, despite the large number of poorly trained and trained, from the mobilized does not help them.
Just because the infantry needs a lot and needs to be well-trained, with experienced command personnel, with modern PPE and provided with communications and tactical-level UAVs to the maximum. This infantry must work closely with tanks, receive intelligence data promptly, and artillery and the Air Force must work entirely in its interests. And whoever creates such infantry first will win. And there should be a lot. Lots of.
And missile strikes will not bring victory. And the expectation that someone will freeze / rebel without a Big Mac and Cola will not bring either. And there are no super tactics either. Ukrainian government can commit dozens more terrorist attacks, we can (at the suggestion of hotheads) bomb them into the Stone Age, this will not give anything significant. The picture will be beautiful, yes. The infantry will give, with its planned increase and full training. But when was it different?
Infantry won all the wars one way or another, and iron served only as tools. And only in the amazing time after the Cold War, they began to rely more on iron than on people, forgetting that "only that territory is yours over which the eggs of your infantryman hang." And I repeated this phrase and I will repeat it. People fight with the help of iron, and these people must be provided with everything, numerous and seriously motivated. The problem is that we don't have much of it. Fortunately, they rely on captured random men, with poor training.
